Wednesday, August 1, 2012

There are few true company towns left in the State
of New Jersey. Originally the Villages of Allaire and Batsto developed in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, then the communities of Helmetta and
Milltown in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and provided workers
with housing, recreation, and commerce around their factory sites. One of the
best examples of a company town exists today in Roebling, New Jersey, about ten
miles south of Trenton. It is located on the Delaware River and close to the
Camden and Amboy Railroad, two important attributes that made the site
desirable to construct a manufacturing center. The Roeblings constructed this
model town to support its empire and supply the world with wire rope. However,
the story of the Roebling family’s success in New Jersey begins much earlier
than the Village of Roebling and traces its roots to Prussia.

John A. Roebling emigrated to the United States
1831 from Prussia. In Berlin, Germany, Roebling had studied architecture,
bridge construction and hydraulics at the Polytechnic Institute. Roebling and a
group of young people who arrived with him settled on the outskirts of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they founded the town of Saxonburg. In order to
survive, Roebling had to farm, but as he became more established, he began to experiment
fabricating rope out of wire in 1841, after seeing hemp rope fail as a means of
pulling canal boats over the Allegheny Mountains.

Because of Roebling’s success with the wire rope,
he won bids to build suspension aqueducts and bridges. In 1848, Roebling moved
his operations to Trenton, which was closer to his customers and had the
available resources and transportation he needed to succeed.

Roebling designed and constructed numerous bridges,
the most notable being the Brooklyn Bridge, which he started designing in 1867.
In 1869, he was standing at the edge of a dock, working on fixing the location
of where the bridge would be built, when his foot was crushed by an arriving ferry.
His injured toes were amputated. He succumbed from tetanus twenty-four days
after the accident and is buried in Trenton. His son, Washington Roebling, also of an engineering
background, finished the bridge in 1883.

John A. Roebling

Around the turn of the century, Roebling’s sons Washington.
Charles, and Ferdinand decided to build a steel mill to make their own steel to
be used in making their wire ropes. Steel companies in Pennsylvania had already
been producing steel and in order to stay competitive, and in business,
Roebling needed to construct their own steel mill. The lands around Trenton
were offered at a high price to the Roeblings, mostly due to their stature in
the community as millionaires. So the brothers went south, finding farmland
along the Delaware River suitable to construct their enterprise. Purchasing a
115 acre peach and potato farm from Jacob Hoffner at a price of $17,000 on June
25, 1904, the Roeblings set out to build their new manufacturing site. In June
1905, ground was broken for the construction on the first buildings. However,
being ten miles south of Trenton, the Roebling brothers were troubled by the
issue of housing the workers.

To solve the housing dilemma, Charles Roebling
conceived and designed the village of Roebling, a “model town” to house all of
the workers. He laid out 100-foot-wide streets and chose the London plane trees
to shade the medians. The community featured nine different styles of house
architecture, almost all of them built of sturdy red brick and a slate roof. In
total, 750 homes were built. Row homes were constructed for the general workers
with rent offered as low as $8.00 per month. Cottage duplexes were available
for skilled laborers at a higher rent, and the largest single family homes for
managers and superintendents were constructed with seven bedrooms and offered at
a price of $24.00 per month. All of the homes featured indoor plumbing, gas,
and electric, which in the early 1900s had not been available to many areas of
New Jersey.

Roebling Row Homes. Constructed 1906.

Charles Roebling placed a water tower at one end of Main Street and the
factory's No. 1 Gate at the other, the passageway through which every employee
entered the "Lower Roebling Works." Constructed as part of the town were stores, a
water system, streets, and gas and electric systems. A police force, volunteer
fire department, a jail and school were also built. Two workingmen’s hotels
were also constructed.

The Roebling Inn was the first permanent structure
built by the Roebling family. Men working in the construction of the plant and
village paid $2.00 a week for room and board. Two bowling lanes were built in
the basement. Unlike other company towns, the Roeblings allowed the sale of
alcohol in the community and men would line 3rd and 4th
avenues to get in for a drink. Today, the inn’s exterior has been restored and
is used for senior citizen housing.

The Roebling Inn, constructed 1905.

A general store opened on June 3, 1906 to serve the
residents of Roebling. Samuel L. Major was in charge. The store sold everything
from pork chops to pianos. Separated from the main store by an alley were
several businesses. A bakery, pharmacy, barber, doctor, and dentist occupied
these spaces. Private stores along Knickerbocker Avenue appeared in 1907 and
included several butcher shops, a dairy, ice cream store, pool room, dry goods
store, and confectionery. A fire in 1913 destroyed the entire row of stores.
Most of the store owners moved to Alden and Norman Avenues. A gas station was
built in 1927.

The original Roebling General Store, constructed 1905.

As for recreation, the residents of Roebling had
many options. A boat house was built on the Delaware River, tennis courts were
located on 7th Avenue, a band stand was constructed in Roebling
Park, a ballfield was built in the 1920s, and a community garden was
established on the outskirts of town. An auditorium was built in 1915 with
removable seats depending on the event. It was the site of vaudeville shows, minstrels,
boxing matches, silent movies, and then “talkies.” It was also one of the first
air-conditioned buildings in America. Large blocks of ice were placed on cement slabs in front of fans. As a shower of water dripped down, cool vapor formed and was forced through the building. As the community grew in the early 1920s,
a recreation center was constructed and contained four bowling lanes, six pool
tables, and two shuffleboard tables. A bar sold soda and candy.

The first workers came to Roebling in 1906 – mostly
Swedish. Over the next ten years over 2,000 others would follow - Hungarians, Germans,
Poles, Czechs, Russians and Romanians. In 1912, according to the Industrial
Directory of New Jersey, 1,440 men were employed and between one hundred and
two hundred workmen were constantly engaged in laying out the streets and
sidewalks, mowing the grass, and maintaining the properties. By 1918, it was reported
that three-fourths of Roebling's 2,000 employees were foreign-born. Most kept
to ethnic enclaves within the town and its seven churches. When the last homes
were built in 1921, it is estimated that Ferdinand and Charles spent $4,000,000
to build the steel mill, wire rope plant, and the model town.

The 1930s and 1940s are considered the high point
for both Roebling the company and the town. The plant made the wire rope used
to hold up the Golden Gate and George Washington bridges. Wire rope for oil drilling,
elevators, logging, slings, fishing, construction equipment and mining were
made in Roebling. The electrical wire and cable division produced materials for
homes, high tension lines and electric substations, airports, telephones, televisions,
washing machines, and refrigerators.

World War II and military contracts brought
employment up to 5,000. But after the war, the company began to slowly contract.

After disputes with labor unions, Roebling eventually
sold its housing to its workers. On December 31, 1953, Roebling sold the
company to Colorado Fuel and Iron Inc, ending an era of forty-seven years.
Finally, in 1974, Colorado Fuel and Iron closed down the plants in both
Roebling and Trenton, leaving behind 70 empty buildings in Roebling.

In 1983,
the property was declared a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency. A remediation plan was drafted for the cleanup of the site and its
buildings. Between 1983 and 2011, ninety-nine percent of the buildings were
torn down, with the exception of the No. 1 gate, which was fully restored as
part of the remediation and today houses the Roebling Museum, educating
visitors about this unique and close-knit community in Burlington County.

The Roebling Museum/Gate No. 1, constructed 1907.

While walking the tree-lined streets today, you can
imagine workers returning home from their shift, children playing in the front
yards, neighbors waving hello to you from their porches as you stroll by, the
sounds of the steel mill in the background and the aroma of home-cooked meals
in the alley as generations of steel working families gather to eat dinner. Not
much has changed since that time, except for the steady flow of workers through
Gate No. 1 and the sounds of the steel mill in the background.

nice writeup and accurate too. I know since my moms side of the family grew up in florence. theres a field off of hornberger ave if you make a left just after the 2 bars that still has ethnic picnics in the summer, mostly hungarian.